


October 2019, London - Part III

by germanjj



Series: Buried Under Clear Glass (Finished Series) [12]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Boys In Love, M/M, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:28:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24242086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/germanjj/pseuds/germanjj
Summary: Sometimes love is so clear to see, visible for everyone around you, and yet you're not able to reach out and touch it, grab it, pull it towards you. It's like it's buried under clear glass.And sometimes, you find the cracks in the glass, but you're unsure whether to finally break it.
Relationships: Timothée Chalamet/Armie Hammer
Series: Buried Under Clear Glass (Finished Series) [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1657570
Comments: 34
Kudos: 116





	October 2019, London - Part III

**Author's Note:**

> this is the final installment of this series. Thank you, everyone, who went on this ride with me, I had such a fun time writing it! Thank you for reading, for leaving kudos and comments, it means the world!

He looks at me, a world of pain he usually keeps so effortlessly hidden from the world, playing over his face, like it was a canvas, and a projector displayed his innermost feelings on his cheeks, the curve of his lips, on the furrowed the line between his eyes.

I pull on the hand interlaced with mine and Timmy comes willingly, no hint of resistance, as I rearrange us on the couch, me, lying flat on my back with my head propped up against the armrest and he, on top of me, sprawled along my body, his head on my chest, his ear to my heart.

I don’t speak for a while. I feel, like I so often do, that we talk more in between our words than we do with them. I have a hand on the nape of his neck and play with the softest hair there until his fidgeting stops, and I believe he’d fought off the tears that had been so close to the surface.

“I don’t remember a time I didn’t love you,” he murmurs into my shirt like he’s telling me about what he had for lunch or about a new song he discovered and not like he’s confessing his love for me. 

But there is no confessing. It was never the part in question, and I realize now how odd it is, that the knowledge of his love grew inside me the same time I myself realized my own feelings for him. 

Does he question my love for him? Or does he, like I do, build everything he knows on the fact that I love him and that he loves me and this is the foundation on which everything else arranges itself?

I press a long kiss on top of his head in way of answering. He will understand, I know so much.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make the screening tonight,” I tell him. “How was it?”

“Was pretty cool.” Then he chuckles, and the vibrations of his chest tickle my skin underneath the shirt. “Could you imagine us showing up together? We’d have blown their minds.”

His enthusiasm for the idea is infectious, and I find myself imagining it and then laughing with him. “Someday, we’ll do that,” I promise him and that thought alone excites me. Someday can not come soon enough. In my vision, we’re even holding hands.

I gently pat on his back. “Get up, we’re leaving,” I announce as an idea forms in my head. 

He does sit up, his brows spectacularly furrowed as he looks at me as if I’d just gone insane. “What?”

“We’re going for a walk.”

“Wait. Now?”

I don’t check the time, but I’m sure it’s after 3 am by now. I’m already halfway out the door, my coat thrown over my shoulders, when he scrambles off the couch. 

“What better time to go for a walk? It’s nice out.”

“It’s the middle of the night and fucking freezing!” Timmy retorts without heat, but is already walking towards where he’d dropped his shoes.

I laugh out loud at his miserable face, already giddy with it, but still, he’s in shoes and coat a minute later, following me to the elevator.

The air is far clearer and warmer than I had expected for an October night. We walk the first minutes in comfortable silence, walking close enough we would brush arms every other step.

We reach the river and walk along until we come to a bridge and make our way to the other side. I stop in the very middle and take a moment to savor the beauty around us. Lights are surrounding us but are far enough that we can listen to the river gently swaying in the mild wind and feel as if we’re far away from the world while still part of it. There’s barely anyone outside and nobody on the bridge.

I step closer to Timmy, who’s lost in thoughts studying the lights of the London Parliament in the distance, and I brush his hand with mine before I slide my hand around his.

He looks up at me in surprise, and I count the seconds he keeps looking at me before he lets his eyes drift around us, checking if anybody is close and would be able to spot the intimate gesture, and I count it as a win when he keeps my gaze for at least thirty seconds. He smiles, tentatively and then a full smile, happy and conspiratorial at the same time, as if we’re doing something daring, which I realize we are, and I swear to myself that I will make him smile like that as often as I can.

He squeezes my hand and relaxes into the touch, looking back out along the river, black in itself, but on its surface, the lights of the buildings around it sparkle as if the river is trying to imitate the night sky. In silent agreement we continue our walk and fall into easy conversation, voices low and intimate, hand in hand as if we are just two people among millions and no one, if stumbling upon us, would give us a second glance, and just continue on their own way, maybe even announcing to a friend upon coming home that they’d seen a gay couple walking hand in hand in the middle of the night and hadn’t they looked adorable. But nothing more than that. No names. No scandal.

We reach the Millennium Bridge as the wind picks up, and not two minutes later, the first drops of rain land on my face.

“Fuck.”

Timmy breaks into laughter next to me as if my misery about cold rain entertains him. I look at him, which only increases his laughter, and I overplay my grumpiness to hear more of it.

I think that if someone passed by us now who knew Timmy, they would recognize him instantly. Or is it just me who has his laughter imprinted in their mind so much they could make it out in any crowd?

Two minutes later and the rain thrums down relentlessly on us. 

Not letting go of him, I pull us both in a halfhearted run towards a building until we’re under a roof, sheltered from the downpour. 

Timmy is still giggling. His coat has a hood, but he didn’t put it on in time, and now his hair is soaked through and plastered around his face. His eyes look more alive then I’ve seen them in a long time. 

He’s breathing heavily between fits of laughter, and he licks the water off the top of his lips, and my hand reaches for him without my conscious effort, and I slide along his neck, my thumb caressing his throat, and then I’m kissing him. His lips are cold from the rain but warm up under mine and then get burned by the heat of our tongues exploring one another. 

We kiss just like we had walked, intertwined as if we’re the only people in the world or as if we’re no different from anyone else around us. 

I tower over him and press him against the wall, and he has his arms around my neck and curves into my body until I hold both of us up. 

I lose myself in his lips on mine and the little noises he makes when our tongues meet and his nose pressing against my cheek. 

When we come up for air, questions are flickering over Timmy’s face, but he doesn’t say a word. I cup his cheek with a hand and run my fingers along his impossible sharp cheekbone. Right now, I regret nothing. All I did before this moment has led me right here, has led me to hold him like this, and to taste him on my tongue. Now that the moment has happened, no one can pry it away from me.

“I love you,” I say and see in his expression that he understands my meaning. That it wasn’t the usual ‘I love you’ I’ve been saying to him for years now and that it was just that one, because ever since I’ve known him I, too, have loved him, have just found new depths and hidden corners of that same love along the way.

He sighs and closes his eyes, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him, but tightening his hold around my neck. 

All the reasons that had been so clear back in the apartment are still there, all obstacles waiting, prepared to not give in without a fight, but there’s something I hadn’t asked then.

I caress his face. “What do you want, Tim?”

“What do you mean?” His voice is breathless, and I feel the words more in the palm of my hand than I hear it. 

“What do you want from me?” I ask softly, and I know that my voice carries my answer, that I’ve already told him he could have everything from me just by asking.

Pain shoots over his face, and I want to wipe it away immediately. “I can’t ask that of you. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Please, tell me.”

He whines as if he’s tempted to take what is so willingly offered to him.

“We’d have to hide all the time, keep it a secret. I’m not ready to be out, and I can’t promise you I’ll ever be.”

“Tim,” I stop his words tumbling out of his mouth. “What do _you_ want?” I ask again.

Standing here, pressed so close, we’re making our own warmth in our own little universe in the middle of a rainstorm at 4 in the morning, and I realize that it’s not I who can decide what is best for him, that I can merely tell him that I would offer myself, wholly, and follow whatever paths he would choose. 

“I want you,” Timmy whispers, meeting my eyes head-on. Gone is his evasion and his hesitation. “I love you, Armie Hammer, and I want to be with you.”

I’m convinced that the smile spreading on my lips will stay there forever. I can count on my hands the times I’ve felt this happy. 

“Then let’s be together.”

He hesitates, studying my face until the words sink into both of us.

“Fuck, Armie.” Timmy pulls me in, places a kiss on my lips, just a press of lips on lips as if we’re both too overwhelmed with emotions to make it a real kiss. And then he hugs me so tightly that I hold his body like it’s my own, like we’re one and the same and I feel a sense of coming home, not having known that home wasn’t where I’d been all this time.

I wake to the sound of him stumbling through the room. Outside it was clearly dawn; we couldn’t have slept more than two hours.

“You leaving?” I croak, my voice barely cooperating. 

“No,” I hear his voice, and suddenly he’s right next to me, crawling back into bed, and I sigh when his body settles back against mine, clothed, as we hadn’t done anything other than kissing last night, and I wonder if this feeling will ever fade. 

“Don’t you have an interview to go to?” I ask, eyes falling back shut as he nuzzles his face against my throat. 

“Canceled. Just now. Let’s go back to sleep.” 

He’s barely said the words, and I can already hear the pattern of his breathing change as he falls back asleep. 

I want to follow, but suddenly I am wide awake and feel the urge to stop time at this very moment, with him in my arms, and a full day in front of us that would be just for us. Who knows how many of those we would get in the near future?

I think back the few hours, back to where we stood under the roof, back to the sound of rain around us, and suddenly I’m nervous. 

About being with him. About being with a man, too, but being with him, specifically, someone I love so much that there is no room for error, because years ago in the bathroom hallway in some restaurant I had promised him he would never lose me but now that I have him here in my arms I realize it had been a promise to myself. That I would never lose him. That I would do everything in my power to make sure to never lose him. 

“Sleep, Armie,” Timmy mumbles against my neck. 

I remember the other thing from that night. Remember Timmy’s kiss and his question afterward.

_‘Is this a kiss I have to apologize to Liz for?’_

I want to laugh when the last puzzle piece clicks into place. 

Really nothing had changed the moment we had kissed under that roof. And yet everything had. We had been inevitable since that night at the restaurant that I had made my promise, maybe even earlier than that. Maybe even when he had cradled my hair with my head on his lap, all the way back in Crema. Like a time-traveler, I want to go back to that moment, and instead of ignoring Luca’s gaze on me, I want to keep my eyes open and challenge him to an answer. 

_‘What do you see, Luca? What are we?’_

Timmy, next to me in the bed, while London around us awakes, kisses the spot below my ear. “You’re thinking too loud.”

I turn my head and place a kiss on the top of his nose, then close my eyes and let my body relax.

In the dream that follows, I can see myself surrounded by shards of glass, strewn around the two of us, and when I look up, I can see the sky, no clear glass restricting our view, my hand in his.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve finished this and liked it and you’re now going: I want to read this again but different but also similar, I might have just the thing for you 😄
> 
> [The Lies Our Bodies Are Told](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21203741)


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